More gold for SA trio in Beijing

Updated: October 13, 2010

Commonwealth Games stars Roland Schoeman, Darian Townsend and Cameron van der Burgh collected their second gold medals as South Africans won another five medals on the final day of the Beijing leg of the FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup on Wednesday.

Van der Burgh was simply unstoppable in the 100-metre breaststroke as he powered his way to the top with a time of 57.75sec. China’s Zhi Xie followed with 58.48 and Naoya Tomita from Japan in 58.58.

Racing almost two seconds ahead of Enjian Zhang from China (1:46.01), Darian Townsend touched the wall in 1:44.27 to claim the gold in the 200m freestyle. Later in the evening, he won the silver medal in the 200m individual medley in 1:54.26, only 0.05sec behind Brazil’s Thiago Pereira (1:54.21).

In the 200m backstroke, George du Rand won the silver medal in 1:53.04 behind world record holder Arkady Vyatchanin from Russian (1:52.42) and ahead of Japan’s Kazuki Watanabe (1:54.41)

Schoeman, van der Burgh, Townsend, Ferns and Du Rand now head for the Singapore leg of the FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup (16-17 October) where they will be joined by Graeme Moore, Kathryn Meaklim, Ronwyn Roper, Jessica Pengelly and Bianca Meyer.